Old skills like Java, Cobol still see demand even as digital deals shoot up

When courses on data science or machine learning see rising demand, the top five traditional skills required in large numbers include Java, Cobol, Sybase, C++, FortranSanghamitra Kar&Ayan Pramanik | ETtech | September 18, 2018, 00:00 IST

Common Business Oriented Language or Cobol, Java, software writing languages which practically were the key skills to land a techie’s job decades ago, appears outdated in the era of artificial intelligence (AI).

A combination of old and new persists in the industry with 70% of the requirements for old skills. Contrary to this notion, technology services companies in India are hiring a significant chunk of people with domain expertise such as Java, Mainframe, Cobol, C++, Sybase, Fortran.

They reaffirm that it is “quite relevant” even when newer and intuitive programming language like Python is gaining prominence in the industry.

Honing skills like writing Python-based programmes, machine learning, data analytics and data science, AI, internet of things, is difficult without having a foundation in languages such as Java, Cobol, C++ and other old programmes, said HR consultants in technology sector.

“All our clients are on a transformation journey. We are helping them optimize their core application, develop new capabilities to unlock the potential in the legacy systems and help unleash Digital for them. All these segments require traditional IT skills like Cobol, Java, or C++, in addition to the new skills,” Chaitanya N Sreenivas, HR Head, IBM India, told ET. He does not see these old skills as legacy yet. “Globally some of our large client run on mainframes, and Cobol is not something we would say is a legacy skill so to speak, it is a skills we will continue to need, however they will need to also continuously up-skill as our clients transform. Java is still core part from programming language perspective.”

Globally, large enterprises and banks are struggling with technology shifts that require their applications - built for desktop to be accessible on a smartphone by their staff and consumers. This is making them reach out to outsourcing vendors to stitch the applications built on legacy code to speak to the newer applications written on HTML5, Android and Apple’s iOS. This is where technology companies are looking for skills in legacy software so as they ensure that the code is not broken, maintained and help these applications to be on newer platforms.

Manish Gupta, Senior Director & General Manager, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell EMC India, said while majority of customers in India are digitally transforming their business units, there is still a lot of demand for old skills too. “We prefer candidates who have a mix talent of old and newer skills because although there are requirements which include emerging technologies, older skills are still quite relevant.” At a time when courses on data science or machine learning see a sweeping demand, the top five traditional skills that are required by the tech services in large numbers include Java, Cobol, Sybase, C++, Fortran. “Unless a candidate knows the basic, how can a company expect him to know the advanced languages,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, president of Indian Staffing Federation (ISF).

Vinil Menon, chief technology officer, CitiusTech, points at a good demand for people with knowledge in mainstays like Java. “Digital enablement projects require full-stack professionals with a wide spectrum of skills across the entire stack. From knowing mainstays like Java, ASP.NET or NodeJS on the server side, AngularJS or ReactJS on the front.

We are also seeing strong demand in a number of emerging areas such as cloud computing (e.g., Lift & Shift Models, Microsoft Azure, AWS), Big data (Spark, Storm, Hive), Containerization (e.g., Docker and Kubernetes), DevOps (Chef, Puppet, PowerShell).” Globally, according to reports, banks and other financial services companies see millions of Cobol programmes written each year and that requires adequate hiring in that domain. Many organisations have seen a language like Cobol is used in majority of the ATM transactions.

Surprisingly, during the past year, India’s technology services industry saw nearly 55000 job losses as roles in pure traditional programming languages faced uncertainties due to slowing demand from clients, according to estimates given by recruitment agencies.

In fact, the top five Indian IT services companies, keep aside the multi-nationals, are seeing faster growth in digital technology-based services with share of revenue ranging between 26 and 28%.

Revenues from traditional programming-based services, which still forms the core, is dwindling.

Kamal Karanth, founder of HR consulting firm Xpheno, believes “While newer skills can give more colour to a resume, fundamental knowledge of older skills is almost mandatory,” said Karanth.

Chakraborty of ISF sees a cultural shift across different companies are making non-cognitive skills important, alongside the combination of old and new technology skill-sets.

“What we look in candidates today is adaptability, flexibility and ability to learn. Being a teamplayer is as important today as your strong technological background,” said Chakraborty, who is also co-founder of Teamlease.